How to install ISPConfig 3 on CentOS 7

In this article, we will show you how to install ISPConfig 3 on a CentOS 7 VPS, as well as go through the initial configuration.

ISPConfig is an open-source hosting control panel for Linux which has a user-friendly web interface – with it, users can manage their websites, email addresses, FTP accounts, DNS records, databases, and shell accounts.

The ISPConfig has four different levels of user access, which are as follows: Administrator, Reseller, Client, and Email-user. Each of these has varying levels of access to ISPConfig’s menus.

Step 1: Connect to your server

Of course, you will need to replace IP_address and Port_number with your actual server IP address and SSH port number.

Once you are logged in to the server, you can type the following commands to update all of your currently installed packages to their latest available versions. After that, you’ll enable the required packages for the ISPConfig by installing the “Development Tools” bundle:

Edit the /etc/httpd/conf.d/awstats.conf Awstats configuration file and replace ‘Require local’ to ‘Require all granted’. Restart the Apache service for the changes to take effect:

service httpd restart

After the LAMP stack has been successfully installed on your server, you can use the commands below to start and enable the MariaDB service on the server.

systemctl start mariadb.service
systemctl enable mariadb.service

The next command is optional, but recommended by us. You can run this command if you want to secure your MariaDB server by disallowing remote root access, removing the test database, and creating a root password.

Step 6: Install PureFTPd

The most popular method for transferring files from one server to another or from one place to other is through the FTP protocol. In order to use this protocol, you’ll need to install an FTP server first. We will install PureFTP server because it is simple to install and easy-to-use. To install it on your server you only need to execute the following command:

yum -y install pure-ftpd

Step 7: Install BIND

BIND, or named, is one of the most commonly used Domain Name System software packages available on the Internet. In order for ISPConfig to be able to manage and configure the DNS settings, you need to install the following packages on the server:

yum -y install bind bind-utils

Edit the /etc/named.conf file, remove all the lines and add the following lines:

Create a new ‘named.conf.local’ file in the /etc directory on your server:

touch /etc/named.conf.local

Restart the named service for the changes to take effect:

service named restart

Step 8: Install Let’s encrypt

We can easily add support for Let’s Encrypt in Apache using:

yum -y install certbot-apache

Add a cronjob so the Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates can be renewed automatically:

* 4 * * * /usr/bin/certbot renew >/dev/null 2>&1

Step 9: Install fail2ban

Stop and disable the firewalld service:

systemctl stop firewalld.service
systemctl disable firewalld.service

Then, install fail2ban:

yum install iptables-services fail2ban fail2ban-systemd

Step 10: Install ISPConfig

After we finish all previous steps, it’s time to download and install ISPConfing 3 on the server. We will use the wget command to make a copy of the official web link on the ISPConfig website. To change the directory to /opt/ and download the ISPConfig packages, run the next two commands:

Once the package has been downloaded, we’ll need to unpack it in order to use it. Unpack it with the command:

tar -zxvf ISPConfig-3-stable.tar.gz

Then use the following command to change the directory where the install script is placed.

cd ispconfig3_install/install/

To start the installation, you need to run this command:

php -q install.php

Output:

The Setup Prompt for ISPConfig 3

The installation instructions are self-explanatory, with each prompt describing exactly what sort of input ISPConfig expects. Once the setup is complete, you can continue to the next step.

Step 11: ISPConfig Login

Since the installation is completed, you should be able to access the ISPConfig control panel on your web browser. Open your preferred web browser and type your server’s IP address with the default configured port for ISPConfig, as shown below.https://server_IP_address:8080/

The Login Screen for ISPConfig

Enter the login credentials so that you can log in.

Upon login on the ISPConfig panel, you will see the panel dashboard, as shown in the image below.

The Dashboard for ISPConfig 3

In this article, we showed you how to install LAMP, Dovecot, Amavisd-new, ClamAV, SpamAssassin, PureFTPd, BIND, and of course, ISPConfig. Now you can continue exploring this open source control panel and check the possibilities that it offers.

Of course, if you are one of our Managed CentOS Hosting customers, you don’t have to install ISPConfig 3 on your CentOS 7 VPS – simply ask our admins, sit back, and relax. Our admins will install and configure ISPConfig 3 on CentOS 7 for you immediately. You can also use one of our Managed ISPConfig Hosting plans, where ISPConfig comes pre-installed and set up out-of-the-box, ready to be used.

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Configuring DBServer Installing ISPConfig crontab Installing ISPConfig crontab no crontab for root Detect IP addresses Restarting services … Job for dovecot.service failed because the control process exited with error cod e. See “systemctl status dovecot.service” and “journalctl -xe” for details. Job for httpd.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See “systemctl status httpd.service” and “journalctl -xe” for details. PHP Warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system’s timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone _set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected t he timezone ‘UTC’ for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /opt/ispconfig3_install/install/install.php on line 628 Installation completed.